Guns N’ Roses were in turmoil in 1995.

Three years of relentless touring had worn them down to the bone, and they found themselves under intese pressure from record company bosses to deliver a successful follow-up to 1991’s sprawling mega-hit Use Your Illusion.

It’s an album which would ultimately never materialize.

Instead, mercurial frontman W. Axl Rose would watch on in horror as “the most dangerous band in the world” imploded around him, and spent the remainder of the decade trying to bury his former best friends by re-inventing Guns N’ Roses into an experimental rock project which came to be known as “Nu-GNR”.

Textbook.

They’re Out Ta Get Me

The disintegration of Guns N’ Roses began in late 1994, when they started discussing the musical direction of their potential new album.

“I could tell that Axl wasn’t ready to do a new record yet. I was hesitant to start the process because I felt he needed more time, but there was a lot of pressure on us because even though we’d been touring and filling stadiums for the last three years, somehow we’d lost money!”

Axl had decided he would like incorporate elements of electronic/industrial rock into their sound, due to his current fascination with Nine Inch Nails.

None of the other members were keen on this idea, especially Slash.

The way Slash saw it, GN’R had already departed from their trademark sound on Use Your Illusion, and he wanted the next album to return to the raw rock of their 1987 debut Appetite For Destruction.

“That’s just what he was like. A couple of years before this he wanted us to put some grunge stuff in our sound and I told him we didn’t need to keep changing what we do just to remain current or trendy or whatever. Different genres of rock come in and out of style all the time, you know? What we do best is straight-ahead hard rock, and I that’s what I want us to get back to.”

Rose is said to have berated his top-hatted friend for wanting to stay in familiar territory, and challenged him to improve his skill-set in order to keep GN’R at the cutting edge of 90s rock. It’s a heated exchange which drove a wedge between the pair before a single note had been played – and the situation was about to get a whole lot worse…

“Yeah, I can summarize the Guns breakup with three words; Paul Fucking Huge.”

Paul. Fucking. Huge.

Slash believed he and Axl could get back on the same page if they started playing music again, so he signed a deal for GN’R to contribute a cover of The Rolling Stones classic Sympathy For The Devil to the soundtrack to the new Tom Cruise movie Interview With The Vampire.

Unfortunately, the whole concept seemed to go right over Axl’s head.

The frontman skipped the recording sessions entirely, and showed up to record his vocals long after his bandmates had already finished the rest of the work.

When Rose arrived he brought childhood friend Paul Huge (pronounces Hoo-gey) along for the ride, and at some point that evening he made a couple of decisions which would fuck up the future of Guns N’ Roses forever.

You see, Slash had laid down both rhythm and lead guitar sections for the track as GN’R had been operating without a rhythm guitarist since Rose fired Gilby Clarke at the end of the Use Your Illusion tour six months earlier. For some reason, Axl decided that his friend Paul Huge should replace the rhythm guitar parts (!), and then he quickly sent the finished version of the track to Geffen Records without letting his bandmates hear what he’d done (!!).

This proved to be final straw for Slash, who essentially “quiet quit” the band.

“Yeah, that’s one of the biggest, most personal things that Axl and I ever went through. It really pissed me off that he brought in an outside guitar player.

I was angry when I heard the final mix because he’s got Huge doing this sort of “call and answer” thing alongside my solo, and I think that between the two of them they ruined what could’ve been a great way for us to get things going again, and also a way for us to show our respects to some of our heroes.”

Axl’s version of events is different.

He claims that he only introduced Huge as a temporary measure, and didn’t think it would be a big deal.

He states that his bandmates were struggling to come up with ideas for a new permanent rhythm guitarist and he was simply trying to plug that gap on this record, without realizing that Slash had already done both guitar parts.

All of the other GN’R members have since trashed this theory in their subsequent autobiographies, with Slash, Duff, and Matt Sorum all saying that they were confused as to why Axl had fired the well-liked Gilby Clarke, and that he was making band decisions on his own by this point in the mid-90s.

And to make the situation worse, Slash’s rage towards Huge seemed somewhat personal.

“I didn’t like that guy from day one.

He wasn’t anywhere near good enough to be in the band, and the fact we weren’t consulted about it made it so much worse. I can’t be clear enough when I say that Paul Huge is Axl’s friend and nothing more. He is not in GN’R and never will be as far as I’m concerned. Fuck that guy.“

GN’R held sporadic recording sessions over the next 18-months in an attempt to smooth things over, but it seemed as if the relationship between Axl and Slash had crossed the point of no return.

The final nail was hammered into the coffin of GN’R at the tail-end of 1996, when Axl Rose dropped a nuke on fans’ hopes of a reconciliation by sending this astonishing fax to MTV News:

“LIVE!!! From “Burning Hills”, California…

Dur to overwhelming enthusiasm and that “dive in and find the money” attitude, I’d like to report that there will be NO new GNR tour, NO website, NO fan club, NO new merchandise, and NO new music videos!

There will, however, be a brand new 12-15 song Guns N’ Roses album, and if it does well, it will be immediately followed by another.

Also, Slash will NOT be involved in this project because he hasn’t been musically involved with Guns N’ Roses since April 1994 anyway (except for a very unproductive two-week period in the fall of 1995), and NOTHING here is subject to change unless I see a permanent suspension of his “pseudo studio musician” work ethic.”

Yikes.

Having issued what he considered to be a “final written warning” to his bandmate, Rose was dismayed to find out that the public humiliation it caused left Slash no other choice but to hand in his resignation.

The GN’R journey was over, and the pair followed it up with four months of radio silence.

Where Do We Go Now?

In early 1997, drummer Matt Sorum believed he could mend the broken relationship of Axl and Slash if he could fill the band’s problematic rhythm guitar role.

He took Axl to watch Cirque de Soleil, where former Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck was playing as part of the show.

Sorum explained that he’d been keeping tabs on Finck for a while, and he believed he’d make an excellent partner for Slash if they could persuade him to join the band when his current tour ended. He figured this was an easy win as Axl was already a big fan of Finck’s work with Nine Inch Nails, and Rose was reportedly very keen on the idea.

“He went to watch one of Robin’s solo gigs about a month later, and he came back and said “Wow! That’s our new guitar player!” I was so happy, because I thought we finally had a rhythm guitarist and we could get Slash back, but he said, “Nope, he’ll be playing lead.”“

Axl’s pursuit of Finck is largely recognized as the first step in the creation of Nu-GNR, even though long-term members Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum were technically there at this point, because it kicked of a cataclysmic chain of events.

Sorum was the next person to be fired.

Duff McKagan said Sorum’s departure came as a result of the drummer growing frustrated that Axl hadn’t begun work on a new Guns N’ Roses album.

“It’s like Matt was always sitting on an ejector seat as far as Axl was concerned, because he wasn’t part of the original group.

He’d say things like “I’m gonna fire him!” over un-important issues, and on this day I snapped at him and said hiring and firing people isn’t his sole responsibility because we’re supposed to be a group. Of course, he fired him anyway, and it was all because Matt told him he was wrong.

In retrospect, the truth is Matt was right and Axl was wrong indeed.”

Soon after the row erupted in the studio, Paul Huge is alleged to have made a derogatory comment about the recently departed Slash, to which Sorum decided enough was enough.

“I jumped up and said “Hey, fucker! You don’t say anything about him when I’m in the room!”

The thing is, he’s one of Axl’s oldest friends, so me reacting like that just made things ten times worse between me and Axl. When I was walking out through the carpark, Huge followed me and told me to come back to the studio, and I said “I can’t, dickhead! He’s just fired me! I hope you feel good about breaking up one of the best rock bands in the fucking world!”

That man is a joke and I totally understand why Slash couldn’t stand to be around him.”

So now Axl found himself needing a new drummer, too.

He began holding sessions, and first up was Chris Vrenna (another ex-member of Nine Inch Nails).

Vrenna visited the studio for two-and-a-half weeks to get a feel for what it would be like to be part of Guns N’ Roses, but ultimately decided to reject the job.

“Yeah, something wasn’t right.

We spent time jamming, but fuck, Paul Huge coming in seemed to change the atmosphere quite a bit. It was like they weren’t getting along at all, and after a couple of weeks I decided I didn’t want to become part of that world.”

Instead of listening to Duff’s advice about fixing things with Slash and Matt, the fiery frontman leaned into his quest to hire replacements.

This drove a further wedge between Axl and Duff.

Rose made contact with both Dave Abbruzzese (Red Hot Chili Peppers), and Joey Castillo (Queens Of The Stone Age), but was unable to persuade them to leave their current bands. His stubbornness to back down led to the departure of long-time producer Mike Clink, and Duff McKagan saw this as the right time to leave Guns N’ Roses for good.

“It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but it just wasn’t fun anymore.

I only hung around for that long to be a bridge between Axl and Slash, and once it became clear he wasn’t returning, I just felt like I was done with GN’R.

Axl was shocked, but the fact that he still couldn’t understand why just confirmed I was made the right decision. We went to lunch a couple of days later, and I really gave him both barrels. I told him, “I can’t be part of this band with you acting like a fucking dictator. You hired him (Huge) without coming to any of us about it, and you know how much that tore us apart, but you still don’t seem to give a shit!”

He offered to double my salary for the next album, but honestly, I didn’t care how much money they were going to pay me. I stood up and yelled “You can fucking have it!”, then walked out of the restaurant and we didn’t speak for ten fucking years.

GN’R at that point was a very toxic environment, and while I don’t regret my decision to walk away, I do regret cutting Axl off the way I did. I have no doubt it caused him a lot of emotional damage. That’s one of my biggest regrets, because Axl’s one of my best friends and we should’ve never let our relationship break down the way it did.”

The Wheels Already Set In Motion

At this point, Axl Rose was starting from scratch.

In need of a new lead guitarist, bass player, and drummer, all that remained of the GN’R camp was long-time keyboardist Dizzy Reed, the problematic Paul Fucking Huge, and Rose himself.

“I’m a huge GN’R fan, so I was bummed when I heard that Duff left. He is such a cool guy, and alongside Axl he was like the last thread back to that awesome first record they made.

I rang Axl and we spoke about it a little bit.

I asked him if he was considering dropping the Guns N’ Roses name now, you know, considering he was going in a new musical direction and would be working with new musicians. I figured it made sense. He told me that he had no intention of dropping the name, because he didn’t believe that Slash and Duff quitting was a valid reason to destroy everything he’d worked so hard for.”

Fortunately for Rose, he received some good news a couple of weeks later.

Former Nine Inch Nails axeman Robin Finck had decided to accept his invitation to join Guns N’ Roses.

This appointment provided Rose with a new lease of life, and the move was quickly followed up by the capture of popular drummer Josh Freese (The Vandals), who then recommended his pal Tommy Stinson (The Replacements) to fill the vacant bass role.

“Yeah, to be honest GN’R were never my thing!

I was flat broke at the time because I never made any money from my previous band, so when my buddy Josh told me they needed a bass player I joked with him that I could do it. I never in a million years thought Axl would take me seriously, because they’re such a big fucking band, but Josh passed my details over and I got a call the very next day. I remember sprinting to buy a second-hand copy of Appetite For Destruction (I couldn’t afford a new one!), then learning five songs off by heart, and somehow I landed the job.

It’s funny how things work out, because I ended up staying in GN’R for about 16 years and Axl became one of my closest buddies.”

With a new line-up in place, it seemed Axl had somehow pulled things back from the brink.

The first version of Nu-GNR consisted of:

• Axl Rose on vocals
• Robin Finck on lead guitar
• Paul Huge on rhythm guitar
• Tommy Stinson on bass
• Dizzy Reed on keyboards
• Freese on drums

Things, things got off to a rocky start for the new band when Stinson clashed with… oh, you know who!

“Man, Paul fucking Huge would walk around with the whole GN’R attitude, but he ain’t never been on tour! We’d be hammering out ideas, and this guy who had never been in a band before and never made any records before was just going over our heads and saying what he thinks the new album should sound like, all on the basis that he’s Axl’s mate! I can see why the other guys had difficulties with him, but I knew I couldn’t pass on this opportunity, so in time I learned to get past it.”

Phew! Catastrophe averted!

Now that momentum was gathering, Rose informed Geffen Records that Nu-GNR were up and running.

Geffen were understandably delighted to hear this, as GNR still ranked amongst their best-selling artists even though they hadn’t released anything for several years at this point, so they handed Axl a $1 million cheque to incentivize him to create a brand new Guns N’ Roses album, and they promised him another $1 million bonus upon completion of the record.

Rose appeared motivated by their belief in him, so he signed a deal which would see his new band deliver a track for the soundtrack to the upcoming 1998 Robin Williams flick What Dreams May Come. That song was intended to be This I Love, a gut-wrenching ballad which Rose composed after the breakdown of his relationship with Stephanie Seymour in 1993.

However, Rose later backed out of the deal.

Why did this happen?

Well, Geffen had drafted in producer Youth to replace the departed Mike Clink, and he revealed that although the new band was ready to go, Rose himself was far from it.

Youth (producer): “It could’ve been great, but it wasn’t to be.

I visited his house and had him singing, it was a real breakthrough because he hadn’t sang for 18-months. He seemed to have depression, and the fact he only worked between 9pm-9am and lived a hermit lifestyle was making it worse.

I said the next time I see you I want us to go to the studio and record some vocals, and he told me I was pushing him too fast and that he wasn’t ready for it. Deadlines starting coming and going, and I pulled out because I had a gut feeling he might never come back.”

Shortly after Axl pulled the plug on the soundtrack deal, Geffen announced they would be releasing a 20+ song collection of the band’s most famous hits recorded throughout their various world tours (Live Era 87-93).

This gave them a way to quench the fans’ appetite for new material, as well as providing an opportunity for Geffen to claw the millions they’d promised Axl.

What should’ve been a routine release proved to be a huge misfire, resulting in Axl wasting the vast majority of 1998 arguing back-and-forth with Slash and Duff (via lawyers) over the everything from the track-listing, to which particular shows would be used, and even tinkering with the vocals on some of the songs.

Unhappy with the distraction this caused, Robin Finck decided to quit.

“We wrote so many great songs in the two years I was there, but I grew tired of waiting for Axl to add vocals to them. Nothing was finished, and I just couldn’t work on song titles like “Instrumental 30″ anymore, you know?”

If you’re thinking this all sounds a bit too “mechanical”, you’d be correct.

Rose was so burned by the departures of Slash and Duff that “the world’s most dangerous band” was operating more like a corporation behind-the-scenes at this point. Axl would hand out fixed-term contracts to his musicians, and was very much the CEO.

He already had a collection of new songs ready for the upcoming GN’R album, and the daily life of his bandmates involved locking themselves inside a high-tech recording studio (without him) to see if they could continually improve the music for each of these songs, as well as forwarding Rose any new ideas they came up with along the way.

He was trying to make the “perfect” album, and it resulted in a stockpile of CDs containing over 100 gigabytes of key changes, riffs, and drum loops, which Rose would sift through at his Malibu home and decide which ones he felt had the most potential.

Rose would occasionally make an unannounced appearance at the studio in order to keep his new recruits on their toes, but mostly he would appear via video link.

The safety of this business-like structure seemed to be less about giving Axl control and more about creating the safety net he felt he needed at this point in time, likely as a response to the emotional trauma he experienced when his former bandmates (in his view) walked out on him.

In retrospect, Finck’s departure was the perfect opportunity for Rose to patch things up with Slash, Duff, and Matt in early 1999, but instead he doubled down by announcing their would be a brand new lead guitarist joining the band in a few weeks, and he signed another movie deal.

This time he promise to submit a brand new GN’R song to be used on the soundtrack of the upcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger movie End Of Days.

And to everybody’s surprise, he actually did it!

Dropping in November 1999, the industrial-edged Oh My God became Axl’s first new material in 5 years, and it gave long-suffering GN’R fans their first chance to hear a) Rose’s new musical direction, and b) how the band sounded.

The response was mixed.

Several rock outlets were full of praise for Rose’s bravery in expanding his sound, but the majority of the band’s fanbase felt it was too far removed from the classic GN’R sound to be considered anything more than an Axl Rose solo project.

A couple of weeks later, Rose finally landed that new lead guitarist…

“Axl drops by the studio one night with a big smile on his face and says: “Buckethead!!!” I’ve known Bucket since 1991, and he was like, “I knew you’d know him! How can we get in touch with him?”

I set up a meeting and those two hit it off immediately, man. Bucket didn’t connect with many people, but I guess something about Axl made him feel comfortable, or understood, or whatever. Three weeks later Axl was Bucket’s hero and he was all-in.”

For those unfamiliar with Buckethead, this is a guitar virtuoso the likes of which GN’R had never seen.

Yes, we all love Slash and Izzy (and Robin Finck), but Buckethead is on another level entirely.

He’s one of the few musicians who could legitimately lay claim to the moniker if “the best guitarist on the planet”, so the fact that Axl had pulled off such a coup made the rock media sit up and take notice.

Dave Mustaine: “I love Slash, but then you see a guy like Buckethead… Buckethead is probably twice as good a guitar player as me and Slash combined, and he does it while wearing a frigging bucket!”

The singer was reportedly obsessed with his new axeman’s quirky personality as much as his fretboard skills.

You see, the slender 6″6 shredder concealed his identity by wearing an emotionless white mask topped off with an upturned KFC bucket. He chose to remain silent at all times, communicating via a series of simplistic hand gestures and awkward head tilts, and despite giving off serious Michael Myers vibes he was obsessed with Disney.

Seriously.

All of these shenanigans only added to Axl’s infatuation, and he flew his new recruit to the famous Florida theme park where it is rumoured he signed his GN’R contract inside the Haunted Mansion.

In true Guns style, though, the exceptional news of Buckethead’s arrival was immediately followed by a sucker-punch, as key member Josh Freese (the man who had helped Axl assemble much of the Nu-GNR line-up and wrote the melody for the title track of the new album) had decided not to renew his GN’R contract.

Unfortunately, Freese’s reasons sounded all too familiar…

“I, like Robin and others before him, left GN’R because I felt frustrated at how long the record was taking.

My two-and-a-half year contract was up, and I would’ve happily signed a new one but there were no signs that we would be releasing the album or touring, and I was so bored. I really like Axl, and I’d happily go back if he needs me for anything once the record is out, but I just couldn’t sit around any longer, I wanna play!”

The very next week, Freese and Billy Howerdel formed A Perfect Circle.

The pair met while Howerdel was working as a Pro Tools engineer at the GN’R studio, and their new band immediately landed a Summer ’99 support slot alongside none other than Nine Inch Nails, featuring recent GN’R alumni Robin Finck.

Unlike the departures in the old band, however, Josh left on incredibly good terms with Rose.

Making sure not to leave the frontman in the lurch, he wrote a list of potential replacements who he felt could continue his work, and sitting at the top of that list was former Primus drummer Brian “Brain” Mantia, who also happened to be one of Buckethead’s best friends.

“Man, the studio they were using was insane, better than anything I’d ever seen before.

Axl seemed like a nice guy, but I got the feeling that he’d been through some shit. I guess he’d gotten used to people joining and then leaving because of how long it was taking to make the new album, so he seemed bit down. During my the audition he gave me permission to do any side projects that I wanted to do, as long as I didn’t leave him while he worked through whatever he was going through. Honestly, though, as soon as I met the guy and saw their setup I knew this was the only place I wanted to be.”

The problematic Paul Huge was still lurking in the background at this point, but his role diminished further when Rose made the surprise announcement that Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck would be returning to the GN’R fold to create a formidable partnership with Buckethead.

Riding high on the crest of this wave, things got really crazy…

Yep, Axl made a sensational attempt to re-hire Izzy Stradlin!

You read that correctly.

Despite famously abandoning GN’R during the throes of their hellacious Use Your Illusion tour back in 1992, Stradlin had managed to remain close friends with Rose. Fully aware that fans often reference Izzy’s departure as “the beginning of the end” for the classic line-up, Axl was keen to show he meant business by luring his old pal back into the group.

Unfortunately, Stradlin declined the invitation.

“Yes, Axl called me up in early 2000 and asked if I’d be interested in taking a look at things. He didn’t want to reform the original line-up, because I was the only one he spoke to, but I declined the invitation in any event.”

The Stradlin mis-step aside, things were looking pretty good for Nu-GNR.

Not only did Axl finally finally have the steady line-up he craved, it was a unit of insanely talented musicians, which consisted of:

• Axl Rose on vocals
• Buckethead and Robin Finck sharing guitar duties
• Tommy Stinson on bass
• Dizzy Reed on keyboards
• Brian “Brain“ Mantia on drums

Ain’t It Fun?

After disappearing from the public eye in early 1994, Rose had become an expert at conceling his identiy on nights out.

So much so, in fact, that ex-Gunner Gilby Clarke didn’t recognize him at one of his gigs!

Gilby: “One of the guys in my band said the man in the baseball cap at the bar looked like Axl. We walked over there, tapped him on the shoulder, and I was like “Nope, that’s not him!”, and he answers, “Hey Gilby, how you doing?!” We had a great talk. He was so full of life when discussing his plans for his new band. It made me happy to see him happy.”

The frontman spent about half an hour catching up with Clarke, and to the surprise of everyone in attendance he climbed on stage to perform Dead Flowers (the song he provided back vocals to on Clarke’s 1994 album Pawnshop Guitars).

It was his first public appearance and performance in several years.

Welcome (Back) To The Jungle

All the hiring, firing, and re-hiring seemed to be over, and Axl’s new incarnation of Guns N’ Roses were finally ready to hit the road.

He announced that they would return at Rock In Rio III.

This is a music festival which attracts over 200,000 fans, so the stage (and the pressure) doesn’t really get any bigger. With that in mind, Rose put together a hastily-prepared warm-up gig at the House of Blues (Las Vegas) to shake off the ring rust.

The warm-up gig would go down in history as a pivotal moment in GN’R lore, as it marked the first ever live performance of so-called “Nu-GNR”.

Kevin Morrow (House Of Blues): “We had already booked Goo Goo Dolls as our New Year entertainment, and to tell you the truth, when I got a call from Guns N’ Roses I thought it was a prank! When it was confirmed real we arranged for them to go on stage after the New Year celebrations, at around 2am.”

And with that, the eagle had landed.

A sold out crowd witnessed the birth of Axl’s “Frankenstein-like” reincarnation of Guns N’ Roses, as they tore through the band’s most famous hits and even debuted a handful of new songs. It was such a secretive gig that there was actually no footage of it – anywhere! – and the general consensus is that they absolutely rocked the joint.

Holy shit, maybe this is possible then?

EDIT: We now have the pro-shot video of this concert!

Two weeks later and they were in Rio.

The media were out in force, and their primary objective was to capture the first glimpses of a newly-returned Axl Rose.

Perhaps the biggest testament I can give to describe how big of a star Rose was in the 90s (and the size of the hole he left in the rock world in particular) is to point out that the remainder of the festival’s line-up (which included the likes of Elton John, Britney Spears, and Foo Fighters) were able to freely explore the beaches of Rio without being hassled by paparazzi.

Geffen execs worried that this sudden burst of attention may trigger one of his famous meltdowns (which would’ve only made it even bigger news), but instead Rose appeared relaxed and happy, posing for photographs and joking with reporters, seemingly amused by their fascination with him.

Looking back, what’s most interesting about this “wilderness years” era is that Axl had only been gone for six years.

Yes, that’s all it was.

Any GN’R fan who was around during this time will tell you that it felt like significantly longer.

Indeed, several other artists have taken this length of time out of the limelight in recent years (e.g. Beyonce’s six year hiatus between 2016-2022), but the crazy world of Axl Rose was such that it seemed like decades had passed since the last time we saw him.

(Of course, when I say he was “gone” I mean literally gone. That’s not necessarily how people would do it today, because artists can still remain somewhat active via social media, whereas Rose went from being the industry’s biggest rock star to disappearing off the face of the Earth.)

As showtime approached in Rio, the atmosphere was a delicate mixture of excitement and dread.

• Will Axl show up?
• Did he get fat and bald?
• Who the fuck is Buckethead?
• How can Slash not be in the band?

We wanted all of these questions (and several more) to be answered, and you could feel a palpable sense of relief when the first few notes of Welcome To The Jungle’s staccato riff began cutting through the Brazilian skyline.

Holy shit, he’s back!

A few moments later, Axl announced his return via a face-melting “Do you know where the fuck you are?” and Rio lost it’s collective shit.

It’s a note which seemed to go on… and on…and on… somehow capturing five years of frustration into eight simple words.

His new band went on to play a mostly great two-and-a-half hour set. Read our review of it here.

By the end of the evening it appeared that, against all odds, Axl’s big comeback had been everything he could’ve possibly hoped for and then some – and perhaps indicative of the lack of quality in the hard rock scene at the time, he he’d managed to float back to the top of the rock table with just one stellar performance.

Kurt Loder (MTV): “About 10-minutes into their set, it became clear that the new Guns N’ Roses line-up is a rock n’ roll event, the sort that a lot of people (me included) have been waiting a long, long time for. While the reigning rap-rock groups of the moment (Korn, Limp Bizkit, et al) manage to get by with pure sonic wallop, the new GN’R already seem to play with a level of precision and passion that’s unlikely to be matched anytime soon, which is astounding considering they’ve only had a month of rehearsals.”

Hey You Caught Me In A Coma

Fuck.

This being Guns N’ Roses, things didn’t run smoothly for very long.

In the aftermath of the glowing reviews for their Rio performance the band had decided to head out on a world tour starting in South America, but Axl decided to pull the plug at the last possible moment.

Now, if he had released a statement saying that the Rio show took a toll on his voice and he needed some additional recovery time I’m sure most fans would’ve accepted this reason, right? After all, he hadn’t performed in over six years!

Sadly he didn’t do that, he just cancelled the tour and went back home.

Oh, and this break ended up lasting 18-months!

Pretty Tied Up

After teasing their comeback with such a well-received show, this period of inactivity caused numerous tensions within the band.

Most notably for Buckethead, who struggled to deal with Geffen executives and had several clashes with no-nonsense producer Roy Thomas Baker.

Tom Zutaut (manager): “Buckethead actually quit the band in mid-2001, about four months after Rio He was having lots of creative differences with Roy Thomas Baker at the time, because Roy wanted him to play in a more traditional style whereas Buckethead doesn’t really do that at all.”

Fortunately, Axl managed to save the day.

Zutaut: “Despite his intimidating apperance, Buckethead is a bit like a child. Axl had become his hero, and it really broke his heart when he felt like he needed to resign, because he didn’t want to let his hero down.

So when Axl found out about the situation he fired Roy, and took Buckethead on another trip to Disneyland to work things out.

He reassured him that he doesn’t want him to change his playing style at all, and promised him that the album would soon be finished, and a world tour would commence as planned.

And in one of the crazier things I’ve seen him do (and that’s saying something considering it’s Axl!), he even agreed to build Buckethead a chicken coup inside the recording studio. I think he could’ve asked for anything and Axl would’ve done it at this point, because he just loved having him in the band.”

Wait… a chicken coup?!

Zutaut: “Yeah, Bucketead used to carry this toy chicken with him all the tie, and he said if he had a coup it would make him feel more comfortable in the recording studio, and posisbly help him to write awesome music.

As weird as it seemed it did actually work (laughs)!

Of course, it eventually blew up in his face. One evening Axl came to the studio and saw Buckethead watching porn inside this chicken coup, like really hardcore stuff. Buckethead said that it was inspiring him to create, but Axl totally lost it and made it clear that kind of behaviour has no place in his band. This was the only time I ever saw him lose his temper with anyone in the new band.”

Rose stayed true to the promise he made Buckethead, despite the fact that his voice hadn’t fully recovered from the Rio performance, by scheduling a small tour for the latter half of 2001.

Unfortunately, the Kentucky Fried Shredder was said to have been so deeply hurt by the Rose’s rollicking he went AWOL on the eve of the first show, forcing the cancellation of the entire tour.

To make matters worse, the guitarist never contacted anyone in the GN’R camp to inform them of his absence, and then he uploaded a cryptic message to his personal website in which he claimed to have “experienced a sudden mystery illness”.

The frustration of having to cancel his hastily assembled tour put Axl on the warpath, and during the two months Buckethead remained AWOL he informed Geffen that he would not allow recently dismissed producer Roy Thomas Baker to return, then he fired long-time manager Tom Zutaut, and even his old mate Paul Fucking Huge (finally!).

He never fully trusted Buckethead beyond this point, and he hired Richard Fortus as the band’s third guitarist. Introducing an accomplished and established guitarist like Fortus was a smart move, and Rose knew it could act as a “safety net” if Buckethead decided to pull this kind of trick again.

Don’t Watch That Much TV

Axl was keen to get to work upon Buckethead’s return.

He still hadn’t fully healed from Rio (now almost 18-months ago) but he felt there was no more time to waste, so he agreed for Nu-GNR to make a special guest appearance at the end of the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards.

It’s a performance which has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons.

Rose appeared out of breathe, out of tune, and out of sync with everything that was going on around him. There are several moments where you can hear the vocal chord damage which occurred at Rio (most likely the first note of it), and the Mickey Mouse-esque tone which would eventually dog him throughout his later years.

Everybody as pre-occupied with whether the new band could play the old material, but the twist nobody expected is that Axl himself would become the weak link in what was otherwise a stellar musical performance!

It was really quite remarkable seeing Buckethead casually cruise through Slash’s complex Paradise City outro as if it were a beginner-level guitar track, but it’s a performance that will ultimately be remembered as a failure due to Rose.

Strangely, it was the new band who copped the most flack from fans.

This was largely down to the shock of expecting to see the classic GN’R line-up onstage, because Axl had done a terrible job of keeping the music world updated on what was going on behind closed doors. You can only imagine the shock and awe which befell the casual viewing audience of MTV as Rose appeared onstage sporting an oversized NFL jersey, fucking cornrows, and what appeared to be a fresh batch of botox, versus the Axl Rose that departed the rock scene eight years earlier!

The frontman’s insistence that each member of the new band retain their trademark styles seemed to emphasize the issue, by giving Nu-GNR a bit of a “freak show” element which Rose loved but fans hated.

The punk get-up of Tommy Stinson stood out like a sore thumb next to the gothic styling of Robin Finck and Buckethead’s serial killer chic, and it was just too far removed from the stripped-back coolness of the original GN’R line-up for most fans to stomach.

He Lost His Mind Today

Fans who didn’t desert them after the MTV disaster were rewarded with some more trademark GN’R ups-and-downs.

To Axl’s credit he didn’t shy away from the negative press he received, and headed out on a world tour (his first since 1993) in an attempt to show fans that the just caught him ona bad day.

It started off well, too, with several European dates garnering very positive feedback. The band’s performance at Leeds Festival in the UK was one of the highlights of this tour, and the fact that it was also beamed out to a large TV audience did a lot to restore casual fans’ faith in Rose.

(… not MTV large, but still!)

New rhythm guitarist Richard Fortus was a standout performer during this run of shows. Undoubtely skilled enough to play lead, Axl’s decision to have him operating behind the pairing of Buckethead and Finck worked remarkably well, turning Nu-GNR’s rhythm section into a real wall of noise, and cementing their status as one of the loudest bands on the planet!

Of course, there were also a few hiccups, most notably upon their return to US soil, as a gig was cancelled just an hour (!!) before its schedule start time, kicking off a riot which saw 9,000 “fans” destroy the arena and its surrounding area.

The organizers blamed Rose, but he passed the buck straight back.

“The band were already inside the arena, and I was flying to the show.

I told the organizers that my plane had been delayed due to a mechanical fault, but that I would still make it bin time, but they just went straight on the P.A. system and announced that the concert is cancelled!”

Original Gunners Slash and Duff were less than impressed to see a repeat of the behaviour which they say caused GN’R to take the stage hours after their scheduled start times on numerous occasions during their tumultuous Use Your Illusion world tour of 1991-93, and they took to the media to lay into Rose:

“I was really pulling for them when I saw that on the news. However, it’s something that you could see coming, unfortunately, we’ve been there too many times before to say anything different.”

“It’s a mess, simple as that, and it’s sort of par for course with Axl. I mean, he finally gets out there on the road after all these years, and he has just two choices; either he proves us all wrong, or he screws it up. He screwed it up.”

News of the riot put a dampener on what had otherwise been a great tour, and the remaining few shows in the US were played in front of half-empty arenas as fans once again began to doubt Rose’s mental state.

However, a string of fine performances helped to balance the ship, and the final leg of this tour saw Nu-GNR pack out Madison Square Garden for an absolute rocker of a concert.

Spin Magazine: “There was a real sense in the air that the existence of Guns N’ Roses hung in the balance on December 5th, 2002. Their no-show in Vancouver meant that a poor performance here at MSG would surely spell doom. So I’m pleased to announce that they absolutely rocked the joint, and to everybody’s surprise they even went on early! Against seemingly unfathomable odds, the reinvented Guns N’ Roses were remarkably fucking awesome.”

You know what’s coming, right?

Yes, another Axl outburst was just around the corner…

This time he decided to no-show in Philadelphia, kick-starting a second riot which resulted in the Geffen Records and concert organizers pulling the plug on the remainder of this tour and all shows which had been scheduled for the following year.

Ouch!

Now you may be wondering, what on Earth was going through the minds of the Nu-GNR members now that they were stuck in the middle of Axl’s erratic behaviour on a world tour?

Interestingly, drummer Brain fucking loved it!

“I was in the hotel with Buckethead when we heard Axl wasn’t coming.

We could see people throwing chairs around and causing damage, it was starting to get pretty crazy, but man that was life in GN’R. I tried to never let it stress me out because I knew exactly what I was getting myself into when I took this job, and in some ways I think I actually thrived on the pressure of working with a guy who brought so much chaos!

One time, I believe back in ’03 or ’04, we were due onstage in half an hour and nobody knew where he was. They eventually got his agent on the phone, and it turns out he’s in another city! His agent told the management that Axl is refusing to get on his helicopter until the man in Starbucks gets his cup off coffee right (laughs), and we’re all sat their like schoolboys listening in to the conversation.

And the funniest part, the bit that really made me lose it, is that you can hear Axl arguing with this person in the background! They’re telling him he needs to move aside, because I guess there’s a queue building up because he keeps asking for his drink to be re-done, and Axl yells back, “I’ve got twenty thousand people waiting to see me, and I’m not fuckin’ movin’ till you get my coffee right!” (laughs).

Ah man, I’ve never really met anyone else like him.”

Pleased To Meet You, Hope You Guessed My Name

The riots and subsequent cancellation of all their 2003 dates meant that Nu-GNR rolled into 2004 having to once again make up for lost ground.

Axl decided to hold off on booking another world tour because he felt betrayed that fans still hadn’t accepted his new version of Guns N’ Roses some five years after they first returned to the rock scene.

He pointed out that fans were quick to welcome the likes of Matt Sorum (who replaced drummer Steven Adler in 1990) and Gilby Clarke (who replaced Izzy Stradlin in 1992), but weren’t affording his new guys the same level of acceptance.

Of course, the key difference in both of those situations is that GN’R were an active force at the time. For example, shortly after Sorum’s arrival they released the sprawling User Your Illusion box-set and then he produced their platinum-selling Live In Tokyo DVD, meanwhile Clarke featured heavily in that DVD and then played on covers album “The Spaghetti Incident?” in 1993.

This is in stark contrast to the new version of Guns N’ Roses, where several members had come and gone without the release of any new material at all, and it led to fans dismissing them as nothing more than “Axl’s hired Guns”.

Quite simply, he’d fucked it up.

Kicking The Bucket

Deflated by another year of inactivity, Buckethead decided to quit.

He didn’t offer an explanation or a proper resignation, instead just disappearing from rehearsals and cutting off contact.

When Geffen brought in lawyers to question him on why he had broken his GN’R contract, Buckethead communicated via a awkward head movements and a sock puppet which was placed on his left hand (!).

This time there would be no going back, as Axl decided to cut ties and offer his position to established axeman Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, a highly accomplished shredder who had previously worked with Joe Satriani.

Unsurprisingly, Thal declined.

“I didn’t like the way their management team were doing things at the time. My life felt pretty good, and I was keeping busy with lots of projects, but I knew that if I joined Guns N’ Roses it would take over absolutely everything, and honestly, the way their management team acted seemed pretty toxic so I just wanted to leave that situation alone.”

The Big Machine

Old GN’R members Slash, Duff, and Matt Sorum returned to the rock scene in early 2004.

After remaining quiet (for the most part) since leaving the GN’R circus in 1996, they had now decided to create a “supergroup” with former Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland.

The new band would be named Velvet Revolver, and their commitment to playing straight-ahead rock was an instant hit with disgruntled GN’R fans who felt alienated by Axl.

Their debut album reached the Top 10 in several countries, catapulting VR into the top tier of rock acts.

Their success appeared to irk Rose, and during a rare television appearance in early 2005 he snapped that Slash had stolen material which he originally submitted for the never-made Guns N’ Roses album of 1996. That song would be Fall To Pieces, an epic ballad which features some of Slash’s best work to date.

Was this true?

Well, Slash neither confirmed nor denied Rose’s accusations, but Scott Weiland decided it was time to go on the offensive.

Scott Weiland: “Get in the ring? More like go to the gym, motherfucker! Or if you prefer, go get a new hairstyle you botox-faced, wig-wearin’ fuck! You’re nothing more than a frightened little man who once believed he was king, but unfortunately now you’re just a memory of the asshole you used to be!”

Ouch!

Sensing how much publicity a war of words between the two bands could produce, Weiland continued to mock the frontman by (hilariously) dressing up as Rose for a Halloween concert. The photograph also shows Slash appearing to take an unprovoked shot at Buckethead, which caused some GN’R fans to wonder whether Slash was really as innocent in the GN’R implosion as first thought, but in the years which followed he has always maintained that he meant no offence.

Rose was of the opinion that his old bandmates were now trying to use his name to cement their own status, so he decided to ignore the jibes entirely.

However, it was clear by mid-2005 that his Nu-GNR project had become an industry joke.

Need we wonder why?

• The stop-start nature of their schedule.
• The ever-changing line-up.
• A departure from the classic GN’R sound.
• The ever-changing line-up.
• The hirings and firings of a long line of producers.
• No new fucking album.

The sad fact is that people were no longer curious about Axl’s grand vision for GN’R, and now it was cooler to mock it.

Case in point, Rose had to issue a cease-and-desist order to Californian punk rockers The Offspring after they announced plans to name their seventh album Chinese Democracy, and cheekily led the marketing campaign with a note that read, “Hey Axl, you snooze you lose!”

Then the plot thickened considerably…

As Velvet Revolver struggled to adapt to their second shot at fame, frontman Scott Weiland’s erratic behaviour started becoming a little too much for his bandmates to handle.

His shots at Rose in particular didn’t sit well with top-hatted guitarist Slash, who reportedly told Weiland to lay off Axl before he ruins any chance of them fixing their already mangled relationship.

During this time, Slash is said to have made a surprise stop at Axl’s house.

“Yes, I went to see Axl. I’d had a lot to drink and I just wanted to hash everything out and see if we could get the old GN’R back together again. We’ve had our problems, but I love the guy. I called at the front gate but he wasn’t home, so I wrote a note which said something like, “Let’s work this out, call me – Slash” and I handed it to his assistant, but I never heard back from him.”

Fucking WHAT?!

You read that correctly.

Axl’s assistant Beta Lebeis claims that Slash was very drunk, and he stood at the front door for about 15-minutes ranting about the in-fighting which was occurring in Velvet Revolver, and then said he wanted nothing more than to patch things up with Axl so the old band could get back together again.

When Rose was informed Slash’s impromptu visit he threw the note away.

Interestingly, a few years later Scott Weiland decided to issue a public apology to Axl Rose.

Scott Weiland: “I guess it’s ironic that my recently ex-bandmates are regurgitating the same stories about me that they once did with Axl Rose. I heard all the crazy stories from them, where the singer was demonized, and I used to think Axl must’ve been such a troll to work with but having been through this myself let’s just say I’ve got an entirely different opinion of him today.”

I’m On The Nightrain

The pressure of seeing his ex-bandmates riding high lit a fire under Rose.

Throughout 2006-2007 he found found a level of consistency which many thought would never return, nd Nu-GNR became one of the world’s most solid live acts.

Highlight included a headline slot at Rock Am Ring 2006 (see above) which is widely regarded as Nu-GNR’s best show, and a stomping performance at Download Festival 2006 where Axl rolled back the years and won over an incredibly sceptical UK crowd with a great performance. Hell, he even managed to re-introduce ex-Gunner Izzy Stradlin back into the band for a few guest appearances!

The Nu-GNR line-up also underwent a couple of notable changes.

First up, Axl finally secured the services of long-term target Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal to fill the void left by Buckethead., This brought tne three-guitarists feature back into GN’R, with Richard Fortus settling back into a support position.

Speaking of Fortus, he recommended Axl draft in the services of Frank Ferrer when long-time drummer Brain announced that he would be going on paternity leave for the birth of his first child (a move which was initially expected to be temporary, but ultimately became permanent).

Things didn’t go too smoothly for the new guys at first, especially Thal.

“Yeah, Axl was always really nice to me, but the other guys just didn’t want me there.

I guess they’d gotten used to playing with two guitarists since Buckethead left, but Axl always wanted to go back to having three, and to be honest my loyalty was always to Axl because he chased me for two years and he’s the one who hired me, so the hostility of the others didn’t really bother me that much.

They would exclude me from conversations, and make me travel alone, stuff like that.

Eventually one of them really crossed the line and I ended up getting a little violent. I think that’s the moment where they realized I’m not gonna let them walk all over me, and I’m not gonna bail on Axl, so they stopped being jerks and we ended up getting along really well.

However, I definitely underestimated the size of the shows we would be playing!

You know, I figured it would be like House of Blues venues, but within three days I’d jetted off to Europe to play a headline slot with like 100,000 fans!”

The band were flying high at this point, and in late 2007 Axl decided to make a guest appearance on three tracks to be featured on a solo album from his long-time pal Sebastian Bach (Skid Row).

This would mark his first official new music since dropping Oh My God back in 1999.

Delighted with the positive feedback he received for his performance on all three of Bach’s tracks, a newly-invigorated Rose agreed to gift a brand new GN’R song titled Shacklers Revenge to the soundtrack of the upcoming video game Rock Band, and another brand new song titled If The World to the Leonardo DiCaprio spy thriller Body Of Lies.

Holy fuck, fans were in disbelief at this burst of activity!

And as they waited with baited breath for the inevitable let-down (because you know the routine by now), the unthinkable happened… HE DROPPED THE ALBUM.

Chinese Democracy Is Released

Chinese Democracy was finally here, arriving on a rainy November 23rd, 2008.

An album 14-years and $13 million in the making, it’s the first (and only) album from Nu-GNR.

So what gives?

Well, the first things you’ll notice about the album is that Axl was correct in his 1995 prediction that he wanted to move away from the old-school GN’R sound and into more experimental territory.

Because while Appetite For Destruction was undeniably raw, and Use Your Illusion captured a band which had been given the freedom of the studio to grow, this album sounds like it’s been made with the most expensive everything and then put through endless mixes, re-mixes, and alternate mixes to find the version which could get closest to the sound that Rose was hearing in his own head.

As expected for such a polarizing record, it was greeted with some very mixed reviews; certain outlets praising Axl for his refusal to live on former glories, and others berating him for it.

Rolling Stone: “His long march towards Chinese Democracy was never about paranoia or control, it was about saying “I won’t” when everyone insisted “You must.” Now you can debate whether any rock record is truly worth that length of time, or that level of self-indulgence, but perhaps the most rock and roll thing about Chinese Democracy is that Axl Rose really doesn’t give a fuck whether we like it or not, and in an age of watered-down rockstars who seem afraid to court the controversy the genre is best-known for, that’s a very refreshing stance.”

To its credit, the album does produce some sublime moments.

These include a tear-jerking solo from Robin Finck on standout ballad This I Love (the same track which was earmarked for a movie soundtrack some ten years earlier), and Rose’s impressive vocal gymnastics on both Street Of Dreams (formerly known as The Blues) and If The World.

Rose made sure that every member of the current Nu-GNR was able to play on the record, while retaining the drum arrangements first laid out by drummer Josh Freese and several face-melting guitar solos from the departed Buckethead.

The most notable of these is a shred-tastic solo on the exhilarating There Was A Time, which sets the whole record on fire and sets the stage for what will go down as the best vocal performance of Axl Rose’s career.

Lincoln Journal: “Despite all of the pressure, Axl Rose has succeeded in making a very decent record indeed.

It’s one which easily links up to the band’s previous efforts and features some amazing moments, but it also gets in its own way at times.

For example, there are numerous occasions where Rose seems to lash out at anyone with the temerity to confront him, but it must be said that taunts like “Don’t you try to stop us now!” (from the throbbing Scraped) don’t exactly ring true from a man who has done nothing but stop himself for over a decade.”

Fuck, even Slash weighed in on it.

“It’s awesome to hear Axl’s voice again after all these years! I’m very happy that he got to make the record he always wanted to make, and I can understand now that if that’s what he was hearing inside his head when we were planning our next album in 95 or whenever then it goes a long way to explain why there was such tension between us, because I wouldn’t have wanted to go in that direction back then.”

Sick Of This Life (Not That You’d Care)

Despite seeming to have all the momentum in the world, Axl was far from happy.

He felt majorly pissed that Geffen/Interscope had denied his request for an extra two weeks in order to finetune Chinese Democracy’s artwork, and he retaliated by refusing to take part in any promotional work.

Yep, that meant the most anticipated rock album of the last 25 years (maybe ever) would come and go without any interviews, public appearance, or music videos!

If that’s not classic Axl, then I don’t know what is. This temper tantrum caused six months of inactivity at the worst possible time for Nu-GNR, and in the absence of a world tour to support the long-awaited new album, guitarist Robin Finck decided to he’d had enough.

“There was no real involvement from Interscope throughout the whole process! Everyone in the band hates the record company as much as I do, because they never helped us with anything from recording, to marketing, to artwork. With regards to the current state of the industry and piracy/leaks, I have no sympathy for them because they have brought it upon themselves.”

All Things Are Possible, I Am Unstoppable

Once Axl snapped out of his funk, he set out on a world tour in support of Chinese Democracy.

In light of Finck’s departure he wanted to keep the band’s now-familiar three-guitar approach, so he was able to recruit DJ Ashba.

Ashba brought a sense of youthful excitement to the project, having never really experienced the crazy heights of Guns N’ Roses, and his enthusiasm seemed to rub off on seasoned veteran Rose, who blasted through the early part of the tour with a real fire in his belly, and a determination to prove the quality of his new material via great live performances.

It was during this time that he famously no-showed his own induction to the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.

(Seriously, I’ve run out of evens to can’t!)

Rose’s reason for skipping what many musicians would consider a career highlight is that he believes those in charge of the Hall shouldn’t be able to dictate who is worthy and who is not, because they’ve never truly lived the life or endured the struggle, and he considers that the “real” rock and roll hall of fame is your own record collection, not what some guy in a suit tells you.

This was also a spectacular show of solidarity to his current Nu-GNR bandmates, as he was aware the Hall hoped to reunite the old band live onstage.

“That really meant something to us, that he did that.

You’ve gotta remember, Axl could’ve just bailed on us at any moment and got paid a stack of money by getting his old band back together, but he chose to stay in the trenches with us and fight to get our record made, and he got some terrible press along the way. I mean wow. I’ll never forget that. I have nothing but nice things to say about Axl Rose, and my time with Guns N’ Roses will always be fondly remembered.”

This version of the band would tour relentlessly for the next four years (the longest of Axl’s career).

It’s a run which featured several great shows, but the vocal chord damage which he suffered over a decade ago started to become more and more devastating towards the tail-end of the tour, and when their money-spinning residency in Las Vegas drew to a close it spelled doom for Nu-GNR.

Dead Era 13-15

Axl decided he would take some well-deserved time off in order to let his voice heal.

He had plans of releasing a second and third album of the Chinese Democracy material, but as he got his teeth stuck into that project he received a triple-whammy of bad news which killed Nu-GNR.

First, long-time bassist Tommy Stinson (a member since 1999!) had decided that it was time to call it a day. Then, lead guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal told Rose he wanted to pursue his side project Art Of Anarchy for the next couple of years. And finally, Ashba’s other band Sixx A.M. achieved chart success so he left to focus on that full-time.

Suddenly the GN’R camp was reduced to just Axl Rose, Richard Fortus, drummer Frank Ferrer, and of course keyboardist Dizzy Reed (who was here the whole time!).

All seemed lost.

Fans weren’t exactly happy at the prospect of watching Axl start all over again, and their curiosity for Chinese Democracy had long since waned. They now knew that there wouldn’t be a second or third instalments of new material, and they heled very little hope that Rose would ever get past his stubborn refusal to re-unite the old band.

Of course ,the one thing you’ve never been able to do with Axl Rose is predict what he’s gonna do next…

“Let’s Work This Out, Call Me” – Slash

Rumours of a classic GN’R re-union were always aplenty, but something felt different in February 2015.

It was every-fucking-where.

And when the moment all fans had been craving (but never truly expecting) finally happened, a ot of fans simply couldn’t believe it.

Slash had posted on his Instagram page that he was returning to Guns N’ Roses, and that the band would be playing the upcoming Coachella festival. Better still, he was bringing Duff McKagan back as well!

Holy flaps!

Nu-GNR members Frank Ferrer and Richard Fortus would remain in the fold to create a “hybrid” of classic GN’R and Nu-GNR. The story is that Izzy Stradlin wasn’t happy with the financial deal he was offered to come back on a full-time basis, whereas Rose wasn’t keen on re-hiring Steven Adler or Matt Sorum, and he wanted to reward his long-time bandmates for their loyalty.

He also hired keyboardist and backing vocalist Melissa Reese (on the recommendation of former drummer Brain), to add thickness to the vocals and give him a way around some of the issues he’d been experiencing in recent years.

True to the chaotic style of Guns N’ Roses, they announced that their first show would take place at the famous Troubadour Club in Los Angeles on April 1st, 2016.

Yep, it’s April fucking Fools Day!

Is Axl truly crazy enough to wind up his fans about reuniting the classic Guns line-up only to play the April Fools prank to end all April Fools pranks?

Fans didn’t really know, and that danger is precisely what made GN’R so special, isn’t it?

It was 100% real.

Better yet, the band absolutely rocked the joint and looked visibly happy on stage together, creating an electric atmosphere similar to that which occurred at Rock In Rio III some 15 years earlier.

They originally pencilled in just 10 dates around the U.S. to test the waters, but this was continually expanded until it became a fully-fledged world tour (ironically dubbed “Not In This Lifetime”, a reference to what a furious 2009 version of Axl told a journalist who asked if he’d ever perform with Slash again).

The band’s Not In This Lifetime Tour went on to become one of the most lucrative world tours of all time. To give you an idea how lucrative, a 2017 “rich list” showed that Guns N’ Roses made more money than Belgium!

They have remained a functional unit ever since, mainly focusing their efforts on touring and playing parts of the world where GN’R never got to play during their prime. When lockdown struck in 2020 Slash and Duff went into the studio and re-worked new versions of Chinese Democracy outtakes Perhaps, Absurd (formerly known as Silkworms), The General, and a Slash-tastic version of Hardskool.

Where they go from here is entirely up to them, but I’m sure you’ll that the story of Nu-GNR was a pretty cool read!